Inquiry Project

Topic: Cleaning

I would consider myself a very, extremely, messy person; One who has to clean up their room at least once a week to keep it in good looking shape: Not mention, I have 3 cats who love to shed mountains of fur on an hourly basis. I've strongly considered buying myself one of those room-bots, those automatic floor sweepers. But the only issue is that they cost money, like around 250 dollars (US) for one. This is why I want to create m own. One that will perform the same tasks, mainly cleaning up the cat hair that's everywhere. But first I mus tunderstand how they work.

I already know that they work by first mapping out the room and then creating a virtual x-y grid. This most likely comes from the programmes they have wiritten in their "heads", one that calculates how many revolutions it takes to travel the room and from that derives a distance. From what I've heard some of the more expensive bots don't need or use that at all they have proximity sensors, kind of like the ones in submarines. They send a wave out and recieve a wave back in X amount of time and from that, map out and determine the dimensions of the room.

Facterino: Helen Grier, an 11 year old mathematics fanatic, invetened the first roomba after finished watching the original Star Wars movies.

According to https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-roomba-works.html , Room bots or Roombas work by first mapping their envirnoment by scanning the environment using infrared and optical sensors. Sometimes you will see the thing bumb in to walls or obsstacles, but that's normal, apperantly, it helps them map out the environment and map out objects the sensors can't detect.

Even though they look like levatating plastic bricks they do, in fact, use dc motors to move. They use 2 independent motors that are parallel which can drive forward, back, and left and right by alternating the spin on each wheel to make on-point turns.

The 6 key questions:

1. Before getting in to the research I had none really, I knew a lot on the topic already.

2. If I had any issues or questions than I could go to a website like explainstuff, or I could first look on to Ms. Suz's website to see if I could find anything relavant to m subject.

3. I think the "See, think, Wonder" routine could've helped a lot because it's quite simple and creative, meaning that if you stare at something long enough you'll understand it, if you don't then google's always around.

4. The main points I've learnt already or those before the paragraph above with the link to explainstuff.

5. I had no questions so my findings ere expected, but how do I know that I'm using a reliable site? Well I know because that the content is similar or synonymous to that of other sites such as various youtube videos and wikipedia. Plus a little but of common sense.

6. I'm still not worried about anything because there is nothing to worry about.

7. I think getting hit in the head might help a lot, making myself forget most of the things I know will probably allow me to have more inquiry questions.

Citation:

• Woodford, Chris. “How Do Roomba Robot Vacuum Cleaners Work?” Explain That Stuff, 7 Jan. 2018, www.explainthatstuff.com/how-roomba-works.html. Date Accessed: 10/20/2018

Note: some of the thinking routines used may not be as explicitly mentioned as the "see, think, wonder" example.